


hold hands with the person to your right

by justfine



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: 1926 General Strike, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Socialism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24063592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justfine/pseuds/justfine
Summary: In his thoughts, only Tom persisted, commandeering a place in the corner of his mind that he was long convinced laid empty. A strange heat licked like fire down into his loins, destroying him from the inside as flames might destroy the skeleton of a barn long since ravaged by war, the structure duly collapsing. From that shattered man in the trenches, he had never built himself up again. Tom was right about that. He hadn’t changed.Instead, he had consumed the war around him, and let it rage on in his heart.(Or, eight years after armistice, Britain is on the verge of revolution and Will and Tom are brought together once more.)
Relationships: Tom Blake/William Schofield
Comments: 11
Kudos: 67





	hold hands with the person to your right

“Every single generation has to fight the same battles again and again and again. There is no final victory. And there is no final defeat.”

— Tony Benn

*

It was not, as one might have expected, a particularly remarkable affair.

Not an hour before, someone—some rogue syndicalist or militant-type, Will theorised—had sent the next day’s editorial to the men in the machine room. The compositors had set the leading article, the stereotypers had cast it, but the machine minders had refused to print it—and they wouldn’t, the house union representative had told them, unless it was changed.

The article in question had been written by the senior editor Thomas Marlowe. Headed “For King and Country _”_ , it denounced the trade union movement and their threats of a general strike as disloyal and unpatriotic. It was, in Will’s opinion, a slightly ludicrous attack on the men that wore the same wounds as he did, and he did not for a moment believe that it was the claim of treason that had raised their backs. Instead, it was the accusation of the intention to bring hunger and want upon their own people that unsettled them so.

For that they would not stand.

And yet, was that reason enough to interfere with the freedom of the press? Did this not challenge the constitutional rights and freedom of the nation? Will heard Marlowe ask as much of Baldwin over the phone, the editorial room hushed into silence in the presence of the Prime Minister’s tinny voice rattling down the other end of the line.

At that moment, it was near midnight. Will watched the slow trickle of workers spill onto the dark street below as he tucked his thumb between his teeth and chewed on his nail, losing them where the gas lamps’ light did not reach.

“Did ye hear,” came the voice of Murdo Spence. A charming Scot with a penchant for football pools and whisky, Will counted him as a friend. He settled by the window beside him. “Apparently that’s Baldwin called aff negotiations wi’ auld Jimmy Thomas and the TUC.”

Will took his hand from his mouth, wet edge of his thumb glistening in the light. No negotiations meant no deal, and no deal meant no alternative to the general strike going ahead. Unless it was all posturing, which Will would not have put beyond the Trade Union Council. For all that he believed they were, fundamentally, on the side of the workers, their leadership was lame, disjointed and lacking in self-belief. He’d written plenty of half-cooked articles on the subject over the last few years.

“They’ll be shitting it,” he said.

“Aye, they will,” Murdo agreed. “And they’ll be kissin’ Tory arses in no time, as well.”

In his mind, Will imagined the trade union leaders scuttling around the backs of the workers like large, ugly, satirical cartoon rats. He swallowed hard, mouth drying as though coated in chalk. He hated rats.

“And what about us?” he asked.

Murdo shrugged as he patted himself down in search of a lighter. When he eventually lit his cigarette, he leaned further into the window, sucked in the smoke and swilled down some cold coffee. Together they watched the last of the printers leave.

“I just hope all this shite works out,” Murdo said then. “For the miners’ sake.”

Will thought of the miners as he walked from Turnham Green Station to the house in which he no longer lived. A pretty, peaceful street, it was far enough away from the noise of railway embankment and commotion of the communal gardens of Chiswick. Perfect for raising a family, the estate agent had said. Climbing the narrow steps to the terrace, he almost let himself inside before stopping to knock on the door.

As he waited, he took off his cap and wrung it between his hands.

A light appeared from under the door, and a moment later it was pulled back to reveal his wife Nancy, who looked freshly disturbed from sleep. She held the edges of her thin housecoat together as her mouth twitched around a question and her eyes settled on his familiarity. At once, she seemed to relax.

“William, what are you doing here?” she asked gently. “It’s near enough two o’clock in the morning.”

“I just—” He looked down at his hands, suddenly unable to look at her. The white ridges of his knuckles shone through his skin. “The strike is going ahead today. I thought I would—” He stopped and shook his head. “I just thought you should know.”

Her brow dipped into a sad frown as he began to curl into himself. His bones ached for her to hold him, but no woman could be expected to embrace the body her husband had vacated. _Come back to us_ , she had begged of him, but he hadn’t quite managed to do so, returning a pale imitation of himself that still wandered French fields in spirit. Would life have been much different for her if his body had stayed there too? He thought better than to ask.

A light breeze passed through the May-pleasant night, causing them both to shiver. Will could smell home in the air.

“Well,” he said quietly, putting on his cap, “I best be on my way.”

“Thank you, William, I—”

“Give the girls my love,” he added, swallowing down the watery sob at the back of his throat. “Please.”

“Of course,” she said. “Of course.”

He gave her a curt nod before turning back down the steps, not daring to look back.

*

As it happened, the next day, the strike was called. Will arrived at work pink-faced from the exertion of getting there, the trains and buses at a standstill, but he need not have bothered. Murdo, as a member of the NUJ, certainly hadn’t, though he’d told him as much the night before. It was one of his late father’s three golden rules: never hit a woman, never rat friend nor foe to the police, and never _ever_ cross a picket line.

Will met no such picket at the doorstep of the _Daily Mail._

Once inside, he was told to go home.

The next day, however, he was to head to the westmost end of Fleet Street and on towards Westminster, where they had heard many workers had congregated in the early hours of the morning. Peaceful as they were, the editors said, they would soon kick off when the police and strike-breakers turned up. As much as Will might have argued the sentiment, he tucked his notebook in the inner pocket of his jacket and headed the way of Westminster in a rush.

There was a strange, tangible excitement in the air, emitting from the rank and file that stood in small groups along the streets. Dressed in their Sunday best, some of them held stacks of leaflets, while others held banners bearing the miners’ slogan of ‘Not a penny off the pay, not an hour on the day.’ They had certainly organised themselves quickly, but was there to be a revolution? Will thought not—London was hardly Petrograd of a decade before—but he had been told to spin it that way regardless.

Fear, Will believed, was only second to ignorance in keeping the nation passive. If people knew what was happening to them, they wouldn’t stand for it. But they didn’t. Instead, they were fed dumbed-down hysterical patriotic rubbish and ate it as though they were starving. It was the first rule of politics, and the second of political journalism.

How else would Baldwin have won the election, if they had not scared the public with communism? How else would the Government have gotten so many young men to march to their deaths, if they had not made them fear the unknown?

It was only as he turned left onto Duncannon Street, by Charing Cross, that he came across the first gaggle of discontent. A scuffle had broken out between some strikers and breakers, the latter pulled from a bus that now lay marooned on the side of the road, the distributor wires torn from within it and displayed on the pavement. Will watched from the other side of the street as one man grabbed another by the collar of his shirt, the rush of a memory washing over him, saturating his shoes with mud and the folds of his clothes with lice.

The street around him narrowed to a trench.

Shutting his eyes, he touched a button of his neat waistcoat, bringing himself back. He breathed, chest rattling, and opened his eyes.

Blake.

Older and hair slightly longer, but with features still padded with baby fat, he looked just as Will remembered him. Standing on the periphery of the fight, he seemed to be playing peacemaker with a hard grab of his hand to the shoulder of anyone he could reach. For his troubles, he received a stray elbow to the face that sent him stumbling from the pavement to the road. Down his shirt and over his hands, blood dripped steadily from his nose.

He looked startled at the sight of it. Just like before.

“Fucking scabs—Schofield?”

Without realising it, Blake— _Tom_ , Will thought—had staggered towards him, hand now clutched to his nose. The blood ran down his arm and disappeared into sleeve of his jacket. Will gave an instinctive pat to his breast and retrieved a handkerchief, holding it out to Tom as he got closer.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, “it is you.”

He watched as Tom took the handkerchief and smeared the blood dry across his hands before bunching it beneath his nose.

Just as Will was about to speak once more, the booming sound of a policeman’s voice interrupted him and caused Tom’s eyes to widen. Before he could register what was happening, Tom pressed a hand to the centre of his chest and shoved him backwards and around a corner. His back hit the alley wall with a thud, knocking the air from his lungs and into Tom’s face. His every nerve whirred and screamed in recognition of the body so close to his.

Tom peered around the corner with his hand still plastered to the base of Will’s sternum, keeping him trapped and rigid and silent.

“Fucking hell,” Tom muttered under his breath in relief when he adjudged all to be clear. He slinked back to drop himself back against the opposite wall and stared up at Will with familiar blue eyes and blood trickling down over his lip. “Nice to see you again.”

*

Tom’s shirt was ruined, as was Will’s handkerchief.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

Will waved off his apology as they made their way along the street heading in the direction of Trafalgar Square. There was an aid-post nearby, or so Tom had been told. Which meant they had planned for violence, Will thought mutely, feeling his notebook press against his person as he walked. Hand twitching by his side, he left it where it was.

When they found the address, they waited out on the landing as the note on the door instructed. Sitting close, Will could feel the warmth of Tom’s body up the length of him as the outsides of their thighs pressed together. As he moved, Will moved with him, jostled by his shoulder as he reached for a tin of flimsily rolled cigarettes from his pocket. He offered one to Will, who declined, and lit his own as he told him to suit himself.

“So, what have you been up to?” Will asked before Tom could. 

“Working,” he said. “Got a job at the docks not long after the war ended. Been there ever since. You?”

“Working,” he parroted, but said no more.

Will turned his head to the door, eyes trailing from the floor to the ceiling. In his lap, his hands clasped and unclasped. He wiped the sweat from his palms over his thighs and clasped them again. His knee bounced until Tom stopped it with a gentle hand on his leg, fingertips pressing along the inside seam of his trousers.

An old, terrible thought clung to his lungs like asbestos and his breath stuttered. Without looking, he pushed Tom’s hand from his knee.

“You ain’t changed much,” Tom said.

Will turned to him and watched the smoke passing through his lips become air.

“No, I don’t suppose I have.”

It was then, as Will thought of the years that had passed him by, of how endless they seemed, that a man appeared at the door. Tom stubbed out his cigarette on the wall as he stood, shaking hands with the man before being beckoned inside. Will stayed and waited where he was.

Alone, he closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the wall. In his thoughts, only Tom persisted, commandeering a place in the corner of his mind that he was long convinced laid empty. A strange heat licked like fire down into his loins, destroying him from the inside as flames might destroy the skeleton of a barn long since ravaged by war, the structure duly collapsing. From that shattered man in the trenches, he had never built himself up again. Tom was right about that. He hadn’t changed.

Instead, he had consumed the war around him, and let it rage on in his heart.

*

Tom’s nose wasn’t broken.

“Looked worse than it was,” he told him as they descended the stairs and stepped back out onto the street.

Outside, a strange darkness had descended. Streets lamps were glowing, and lights glittered in every house, office and shop through the fog of drizzle. People were only visible as hazy, shadowy forms darting in throngs about the strangely silent streets, uncompromised by the gloom.

Will would write as much later: _Everybody seemed to realise that there was something curiously fitting about this deep darkness, and in crowds there were references, half-serious and half-jocular, to the Plagues of Egypt. But there was no sign of disorder._ He sat pondering that last part, forefinger tapping rhythmically against his chin. Certainly it wasn’t true, but the line, now, was to make sure the general public behaved themselves.

He added: _By 1.30 the fog had largely lifted. The worst darkness had but a brief sway._

It was to appear in a bulletin the following day.

In the meantime, he had to bid farewell to Tom. The rep at the docks, he explained, had volunteered a few of them to come into the city and help set up canteens and entertainment areas. It was of no use picketing the docks as they were already being manned by the Army. Not that there was any coal to ship.

“How long are you staying for?” Will asked.

“Bus is taking us back around five,” he said. “Unless you’re offering up digs?”

Will was peering out into the rain from where they were sheltered under a doorway arch. It was that strange, light rain that always managed to soak its way through to the bone without one realising. He looked back at Tom, his bloodied shirt stuck to his undershirt and his hair plastered to his forehead in a perfect, looping wave. Beneath his eyes, the skin had become discoloured from the trauma to his face. The thick frame of his eyelashes still did not look real.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his notebook and pencil. Back to the street, he wrote his address neatly at the top and tore the page out. Tom took it as it was offered and folded it twice over. He tucked it safely into the inside pocket of his jacket.

It all felt strangely sordid.

“I’ll see you later then,” Will said, offering out his hand for Tom to shake.

Tom, it seemed, was having none of his pleasantries, and pulled Will into a hug. For a long, silent moment they stayed like that; Will desperately clinging to Tom, and Tom desperately holding him back.

*

By seven o’clock his piece had been written, approved and sent to be printed privately elsewhere in London by a bunch of scabbing printers. The ease with which it would be distributed the following morning remained to be seen.

Not that Will was particularly focused on the freedom of the press at that moment. He was, instead, trying to figure out the quickest way back to his apartment in the absence of the city’s trains and buses, with only the taxis rumbling along the roads slowly in the still-congested traffic. When it was, officially, of no use thinking about it, he simply ran. He ran more than he had done in almost a decade and felt every second of his thirty-two years as he turned onto his street where Tom was waiting for him.

“You took your time,” he called from the front of the building. “Was starting to think you wasn’t coming.”

“I live here,” he said, still panting.

He cracked a smile, said, “Yeah, I know, but still,” as Will helped him up by the hand.

Throwing the occasional glance over his shoulder, Will led Tom up the stairs and into his apartment. In the narrow entry way, bumping awkwardly against each other, they shucked off their shoes, hung up their coats on the rack and Tom followed Will’s sweeping gesture to head towards the living-room.

It was a small, cluttered apartment filled with mismatched furniture and books stacked high on every conceivable surface. For Tom to sit, Will had to shift a bundle of newspapers from the couch to the floor, which he did so with a muttered apology. Above the fireplace, King George V surveyed the chaos with a mild disinterest.

Tom reclined back on the couch, easy and familiar in a place he’d never been, but perhaps belonged. It was a talent, no doubt.

“You’ll be tired, I imagine,” Will said, stood in the no man’s land between Tom and the door.

“I could do a cuppa before bed,” he said in return.

Will was almost thankful for the distraction. He walked slowly to the kitchen and took his time making the tea, remembering the last time they had shared a cup, and how Tom had complained that it wasn’t strong enough to cover the awful taste of petrol from the water. He added milk to both, a sugar to Tom’s, and deposited a handful of chocolate digestives onto the tea tray garishly adorned by the face of the late Queen Victoria. His hands shook as he brought it back through.

He sat and set it down again, balanced precariously on the table in front of them. He took his cup and Tom took his.

Tom thumbed the edge almost shyly.

“I missed ya,” he said. His voice was soft and raw; he seemed to have a reserve of untarnished sentiment leftover from his youth. “A lot.”

Had Will missed Tom? He had done, for a while. But when the war was over, he and everything else were neatly packed off to the back of his mind, never to be thought or spoken of again. It was his horror and humiliation and his alone, and he would take it to the grave with him, even if it took him there quicker. After all, weren’t the dead the only ones with the full story? Weren’t they the only ones to truly see it out to the end, if only their own?

“I missed you, too,” he said.

It was the truth, but maybe not the whole truth.

Will felt Tom shift closer. He held his cup tighter, hands enveloping the porcelain.

“I suspect we have a lot of catching up to do,” he said, turning to Tom. He was close, lips slightly parted. The memory of the feel of them clawed its way back to his consciousness, cutting against the inside of his skull like a headache. “You can take my bed.”

“I don’t want to put you out,” Tom said.

“It’s no trouble,” he said. “Not for you.”

*

Will slept, knocked out by a barbiturate, rather well, and only woke up at the firm, warm press of a hand to his bare shoulder. Unbeknownst to him, during the night the eiderdown had suffocated him into a sweat, and he had kicked it to the floor just to breathe. He shivered as he turned onto his back to find Tom hovering above him as a mother might do a child, enjoying the miracle of their breathing.

“Your alarm clock is fucking annoying,” Tom said by way of good morning, sitting back on his haunches in the space between the table and couch. “Did you know that?”

“I did,” he said, pushing himself up on his elbows. “What time is it?”

“Just gone six.”

He rubbed a hand over his face and groaned at the discomfort rising in his body. It had been a while since he last slept on the couch. He sat up properly and swung his legs around to plant his feet on the floor. As he tried to shake the last of his dreamy stupor from his mind, he felt Tom’s fingers crawl lazily over his knee and sweep around in loose circles over the bone. Tom, now with his cheek rested on the edge of the couch, seemed entranced by the way his fingertips disturbed Will’s hair there.

“Stop it,” Will said, and so he did.

The touch did not leave him even as he travelled back to Fleet Street and sat fidgeting at his desk until the statistics from the special recruiting office came through. Even then, as he pondered whether these twelve-and-a-half thousand strikebreaking volunteers enrolling in the Foreign Office Courtyard were _patriotic_ or _law-abiding_ (he went with both), he felt a ghostly, thrilling touch to his knee that raised the hair on his arms and sent his legs crossing sheepishly.

Two of his colleagues asked him if he was unwell; he complained of the change in the weather.

Nancy’s concern was not so easily negated. When he arrived for his weekly dinner with her and the girls, she sat him down, supplied him with tea and let her worry show in her incessant twisting of a tea towel in her lap. The presence of her wedding ring never evaded him, the sharp reminder that there was not the same freedom afforded to a woman when she lost her title as wife as it was to a husband.

Not that he had acclimated to such a freedom. He still wore his wedding ring, too.

“Did you know they’re training men to be drivers at the LOGC depot?” she said. “I passed the demonstrators just this morning.”

“They didn’t give you any bother, I hope.”

It was stale conversation, but it was all they had left. Will thought perhaps he had used up all his ideas and poetry in his youth, or maybe the war had stolen them from him. It had certainly stolen him.

“Quite the contrary,” she told him. “They were rather pleasant.”

“You spoke with them?”

Nancy unfurled the tea towel and smoothed it across her lap. “Annie and I took them sandwiches and they were most grateful,” she said, not looking at him. When she eventually did, she looked pointed, serious. “You will be kind to them, won’t you?”

“Fair,” he said, “not kind.”

It was as honest as he could be.

Likely she would have said more if they had not been interrupted by the sound of their daughters arriving home. Nancy fixed a smile and Will rose to his feet, ready to catch his youngest daughter Alice in his arms as she threw herself at him in her usual excitement. Esther, his older daughter, was not as jubilant, but let him hold her head to his breast for a moment, to his heart, where he had let her rest as a baby. A young, frightened father, it was the safest place he knew to keep her.

And how terrifying it was when he realised, long before he was ready to accept it, that he could not hold either of them there forever.

*

That night, Tom was waiting for him outside his door again. He was smoking and accompanied by a small case of bottled lager. Will had never been so glad to see him.

They sat together on the couch, Tom with his body turned towards Will. It brought back the thrilling rush to his senses that he thought had dissipated, stoking it again with renewed fervour and fire until he wasn’t sure if it was the heat from his stomach flaring his cheeks red or the alcohol he’d been consuming. Whatever it was, Tom did not seem to notice, barrelling through an old story infused with the embellished facts of his memory as one might shove down and up trench.

Memories, after all, were much like the news, Will often thought; they were not necessarily told as they were.

“Have you seen this,” Tom said suddenly, producing a folded, battered copy of the _British Worker_ from his back pocket. He pressed it to the table and pointed at an article titled _German Miners’ Full Support_. He read: “Today the Executives of all the miners’ unions, including the Christian Unions, issued a joint proclamation to the Ruhr miners, urging them to help their British comrades. The British miners’ struggle is our struggle, the proclamation concluded.” Tom shook the paper in Will’s face. “The Germans, Will! The bloody Germans are with our miners!”

Will took the paper from him and sat it back down.

At once, Tom’s face fell.

“Makes it all the worse, though, don’t it?” he said.

“What makes what worse?” Will asked, frowning at the grip his mind was beginning to loosen on his sense and understanding as the lager hit his system. It never felt as good as they claimed it to be. “What—"

“The war,” he said. “Fighting and killing all them German lads when they was just like us. Just obeying their government like we was. Suffering for nothing. Dying for nothing.”

“You can’t think it was for nothing,” Will said, through really, did _he_ still believe that what he had endured would forever free humanity from the scourge of war? Had it not already been revealed as nothing more than the vast collapse of civilisation? It had certainly felt like it, so lost without dignity in those trenches. “You simply can’t.”

Suddenly, he felt Tom’s hand on him. He hadn’t realised he’d been crying until Tom wiped away a tear that had ran to his chin with his thumb.

“You can’t think that,” he repeated, clutching Tom’s wrist, keeping his hand against his cheek. “No, no, no, we went to—we went to—”

“We went to die for them lot,” Tom said, raising his other hand to cradle the back of Will’s skull. “They’re murderers. They’ve got more blood on their hands than we got from the war they sent us into. And they’ll have the miners’ blood on their hands when they let them starve to death, too.”

His every word sunk into the skin of Will’s cheeks.

Will was still shaking his head as he let his face fall into Tom’s shoulder, body awkwardly twisted into his now. He felt a slow pet of fingers through his hair, a soothing hum through Tom’s chest.

It seemed the simplest, most certain thing in the world to lift his head and kiss Tom then, so he did. Eyes shut and with fingers curled into the front of his shirt, he kissed him as he had done so many years before. He kissed him until he could no longer feel his lips.

*

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Tom said later. “Bringing up the—I’m sorry.”

War, Will thought, you can say it.

He looked down. They were in his bed now, and Tom was curled up beside him, his head was rested on his stomach. His breath was travelling over the top of his pyjama trousers and his fingers were tracing the striped pattern down his thigh without intent. Will’s own fingers were carding through Tom’s hair while his other hand was tucked against his mouth, allowing him to bite at his cuticles and nibble down the rest of his nails as he pleased.

He pulled it back to inspect the damage, then returned it to his mouth once more.

“No harm done,” he said simply and slightly muffled.

He knew it would not satisfy Tom—he knew more than he cared to remember what he knew about Tom, now the taste of the inside of his mouth included—but he chose to leave it at that. He lifted his hands away from him as he flipped over and shifted back, nuzzling the opposite cheek into the crease of his thigh. Then, gently, Tom snuck a hand up beneath his pyjama shirt and drew an invisible scar into his abdomen, where his own cut into his skin.

Will reached down to touch his face.

Tom kissed his hand where his lips found it, catching the scar tissue on his palm.

“I really did miss you,” he said, his hand beneath Will’s shirt sliding to play with the hair beneath his navel. “Thought about trying to find you all the time.”

He could have asked, _so why didn’t you?_ But he didn’t. Not because he did not want to know the answer—or, at least, not entirely—but because he had no answer of his own. Why hadn’t he gone to visit him? Why hadn’t he written? His best guess was self-preservation; Tom was behind him now, and he dared not look back in fear of breaking what little was left of himself.

He watched the line of Tom’s knuckles move beneath his shirt as he stroked whatever skin he found, the natural flex of his stomach jumping away under the touch.

“None of that matters now,” Will said.

“It doesn’t,” he agreed.

Bracing his hand against his abdomen, Tom pushed himself up Will’s body until his face hovered close to his, warm breath catching on the wet inside edge of his lip. It tasted like lager. His smile, bordered by more stubble than Will remembered him capable of, caused him to soften.

“I’m glad that’s not all we got,” Tom said.

He leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of Will’s mouth, and then again, this time properly. He touched the tip of his nose to the bridge of Will’s before pulling away an inch. 

“When all of this is over—”

“Shush,” Will hushed, brow creased in the centre. He brought a hand up, threaded his fingers through Tom’s hair and brought him back to him. “Don’t think about it, just—just kiss me. Just kiss me.”

*

The next day, there was to be a demonstration at Trafalgar Square.

“Maxton’s going to be there,” Tom told him, speaking to his reflection in the wall mirror. A bowl of hot water had fogged it up slightly, so he swiped it with his bare forearm. “One of the lads said he’s a rare speaker.”

Hatchet-faced and sullen, the Right Honourable James Maxton was a great speaker despite appearances. An often-caricatured figure of communism on account of his ghoulish presence, Will always found writing about his escapades in the House an amusing change from the norm. As he had once surmised, it seemed the country’s left had rounded up him and his like from a pub in Glasgow, marched them down to Westminster and made them the moral epicentre of the left.

Socialism in this country, Murdo had once joked, only truly came in a Scottish accent.

“He hates the TUC and they hate him,” Will said as he pushed himself from the doorframe and towards Tom. “Why would they invite him to speak?”

“It’s a few blokes from Labour organising it, not the TUC—what are you doing?”

Will, without a word, had reached around Tom to take the dampened shaving brush and soap from the counter and begun to whisk it. He watched, almost hypnotised, as the bubbles condensed under the circular motion of the brush to become thick and warm.

“Turn around,” he said.

Tom turned to face him, a strange, curious smile playing on his lips as Will applied the lather to his face in the same, easy strokes. He closed his eyes and hummed, face pushing towards Will like some sort of contented cat as he lathered on another layer. Everything was quiet but for their heavy breathing and the constant sound of the morning drizzle bouncing off the window. If he had his way, Will thought, all the days he had left to him would begin like this.

When he stopped, Tom opened his eyes and watched him pick up a straight razor.

He looked at him, soft and steady.

“Keep still.”

As Will pressed the razor to his cheek, Tom’s breath hitched, chest jumping. Undeterred, he dragged it down to his jawline, cushioned by the soap. At once, the tension stiffening Tom’s shoulders visually subsided and he closed his eyes once more.

Will set a solid rhythm, letting the razor glide smoothly over Tom’s skin in calculated, uniform movements, until it was entirely bare. He swiped his thumb over his top lip and used only a caress of his fingertips to tilt his head back to examine the underside of his chin. Satisfied, he stepped closer to him, suddenly intoxicated by the smell of soap, and blindly tossed the razor back onto the counter. He cupped Tom’s face with both hands.

“Thanks,” Tom said. “I’d offer to do you but—”

He reached up and touched Will’s already-bare face.

Will turned his face, letting Tom catch his quiet laughter in the palm of his hand.

*

_It is therefore not the principle that the printing trade strikes for any industrial purpose, but only that it strikes against those newspapers of whose political opinions the TUC is opposed to. In other words, the printing trade unionists are to act as permanent censors on everything that is written and published._

Will chewed down on what nails he had left and read over the last of what he had written. If this went to print, he thought, he could never meet the eye of a man that worked in the machine room ever again.

He tore the paper from the typewriter and crumpled it in his fist.

It was by pure chance, as he tucked himself under the overhang of the office building a little later, fighting to light one of Tom’s shoddy cigarettes in the breeze, that Murdo appeared. He looked no more dishevelled than usual, scraggily curls of his hair escaping from beneath his bunnet, but he seemed dour, as if a lifetime of rain had finally invaded his bones and dampened his soul. He fell back against the wall beside him and took the lighter from him, easily bringing up a flame.

He muttered his thanks.

“That’s the Parliamentary Branch decided not to comply with the Executive’s order to strike,” Murdo said, lighting his own cigarette and handing the lighter back to Will. “Bastarding cunts.”

“So what do you do now?” he asked.

Will watched Murdo take his cigarette from his mouth and stare out into the road. It had not yet been a week since they watched over the printers spilling onto the streets from their vantage point of the newsroom, but it certainly felt like it had. Now they were on the ground with them, but it only felt like climbing over dead men long after the artillery fire had stopped.

“I ain’t fucking breaking strike, that’s for sure,” he answered finally. 

He would not go back, but a few journalists in Manchester might. A few hundred ironworkers in Derby would. Some railwaymen in Kent already had. After all, one’s ideals could not feed one’s family. Even Murdo knew that.

“All very well,” Murdo would say in turn, “but if we tolerate this, then who’s to know who’ll be next?”

It was then, just as Will had begun to ponder that _what if_ , that a steady stream of army convoys turned onto the street, heading westwards, no doubt towards Hyde Park. They rolled by unopposed, crushing the idea of revolution under the weight of the bread they carried from the docks. In silence, they watched them until the last convoy had passed.

Will stubbed out his cigarette under his foot and turned to Murdo.

“Would you like to go to Trafalgar Square?”

*

The square was heaving with people, packed tightly together around Nelson’s Column. Amid it all, Will felt hot under his waistcoat and jacket, swamped by a nauseous fatigue. In the absence of his usual sleeping pills, he had not slept well and dismissed his own restlessness in favour of indulging in watching the peace with which Tom slept. He was only now beginning to feel it catch up with him.

However he looked, he imagined it could be no worse than the spooky, stooped figure of Maxton standing on the steps of the monument.

“It is the belief of those that sit opposite to me in the House that the workers of this nation must pass through a period of starvation before prosperity could be obtained,” he said, stirring the crowd around Will. “This is a disgrace. This is beyond the limits of human decency. This is murder. And for what? To fix the economy destroyed by their own reckless decision to enter us into a senseless war and lapse our civilization into a state of barbarism!”

A ragdoll, Will let himself be jostled by the bodies around him as they cheered in agreement. 

He felt as though he was going to be sick.

Turning on his heels, he began pushing back against the crowd, Maxton’s words and Murdo’s calls of his name ringing mutely in his ears. Men buffeted against him as he moved, agitated and angry, until one eventually caught him by the lapels of his jacket and gave him a rough shake, telling him to watch where he was going. He managed a sorry before being shoved on.

He only stumbled to a rest once he had rounded the corner from the square, clinging to an iron railing until the rust made home in his skin. Breath laboured, he sat against the railing, knees tucked to his chest and hands covering his face. He wanted desperately to cry, to relieve himself of some of the torment, but could not make the tears come.

But Tom did, voice appearing through the sounds of footsteps and distant crowd.

“I saw you do a runner,” he was saying as he tried to prise his hands from his face. “Will, what’s the matter?”

Finally, wrists in Tom’s hands, he uncovered his face. Tom was crouched before him, knees bracketing his. A sign that simply read, “T&G: Solidarity with the Miners” lay on the ground beside him. Will recognised the writing as Tom’s own.

“I’ve done a terrible thing,” he said.

Tom looked at him, puzzled.

“And I’ve done as many as three since this morning,” he said back. “What’s the matter with ya?”

Will could not tell him. When he tried, it caught in his throat and choked him up.

Sighing, Tom fell into rank beside him, letting his wrists go but encouraging his head down onto his shoulder even as he covered his face again. He felt Tom’s arm come down heavy over his shoulders and wondered what it must look like to those passing by. A man could only touch and hold another man in such a way if he were dying, he thought, the smell and taste of blood from his hands suddenly rasping down his throat like smoke.

He retched at the memory.

“Jesus Christ, Will!”

Like before, like history was repeating itself, Tom hoisted him to his feet. He held his elbow as he steadied himself.

“We’re going for a drink,” he said, awkwardly swooping down to collect his sign, “and you’re going to tell me what all this is about.” 

*

In a pub by the docks, Will downed an inch of whisky.

A cramped, dimly lit place, Will could feel the damp from the walls settle into his lungs as he gnawed at the skin of his thumb. They were sat at a small, circular table that leaned slightly towards Tom, who kept his drink in a cautious hand. He had barely taken a sip.

It reminded him of a night they had spent in Étrun. It had been cold then, but that had not deterred them from making their way to the estaminet in the very centre of the village for something to drink. Tom had his fried eggs and pale beer, mumbling complaints of its likeness to piss, while Will drank wine from a jug he had commandeered from a man who was leaving, promising to return the favour if he ever saw the man again. He didn’t.

Between them was a want, a painful longing, kept under the wraps during the day by their sobriety. At night, they hacked at it, drink after drink, until there was no want or longing, just their hands shoved down the front of each other’s trousers around the back of an old farm hut. They hadn’t minded the cold.

“I don’t know what to make of you most of the time, you know that?” Tom said eventually. “One day, you’re here, the next you’re—” He made a flippant gesture. “Always have. I like you best when you’re laughing, though.”

“You mustn’t like me very much,” he said, only half in jest.

“I like you plenty.”

He seemed so certain, Will thought, but what did he really know about him? What he knew was what he wanted him to know, built on the foundations of a tired, humiliated man. And yet, he still—he still _liked him plenty_. The realisation buzzed his mind to a pleasant blankness.

He took his hand away from his mouth and let it tap against the table until Tom stopped it with the gentle overlapping over their fingers. He held it there for as long as he was brave enough, then curled his fingers into a fist and set it on the edge of the table. His gaudy gold rings reflected what little light there was, glinting like a stray roaming torch over No Man’s Land. Outside, they would sting cold against his skin when Tom touched him, he remembered. Inside, they warmed with his body.

“We’ve both done terrible things,” Tom said gently. He had taken the long way round to this conversation. “After our Joe died—”

“Joe—Christ, I didn’t—”

Will’s lips wobbled around his condolences, but Tom continued.

“Yeah. A few months before it all ended. Was holding ground with his men for a retreat when the Germans captured him.” He stopped and looked down at his tightened fist. “You was right, you know, about medals just being a bit of tin. Mum couldn’t look at it and I couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t watch her grieve. Just got up and left one day without telling her why.” Finally, he took a long, deep drink and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Barely go back these days.”

“You harvest the cherries in May,” Will said, voicing a sudden memory.

“Takes me ages on my own.”

Will nodded, eyes wet, like he understood.

Now, it was his turn.

“I, uh…” He rubbed his hand over his mouth, as though it might encourage the words to form. “You called the Government murderers, and I think—I think you might right, but they get away with it because people—people like me, we don’t—” Will stopped, watching Tom carefully. “We don’t hold them accountable; we don’t criticize them. We just write what we’re told and think we aren’t complicit in it all, but we are. We are. I am.”

“Will—”

“There’s blood on their hands, that’s what you said. Well, there’s blood on mine too.”

Tom’s lips twitched around his name again, but nothing came.

At once, Will dropped his gaze. He didn’t dare look Tom in the eye. He knew, by allowing Tom to bear witness to his guilt and shame, that it somehow became more tangible, more real, now allowed to exist in the world beyond him. It could no longer die with him. If it was supposed to be freeing, the freedom afforded to him wasn’t true—it was an illusion, built to service the façade of his life but never allowing for him to be truly happy.

It was probably what he deserved.

“I’m terribly sorry for any inconvenience I’ve caused you this past week,” he finished, stood and dithered but said nothing more.

*

When he returned to the _Daily Mail_ building, a courier had brought the minutes of the latest Cabinet meeting. Seemingly now more important than the striking printers, Will picked them up from his desk and read through them.

He wrote like a machine, unthinking:

_As explained by the Right Honourable Gentleman for Spen Valley, a trade unionist forfeited his benefits if he did not obey the orders of his executive. He continued in saying that what Parliament had in mind, on introduction of the Trade Disputes Act for which he voted aye, was a strike of a lawful character. He reiterated his belief that the free, fair use of the power given to workers in the Act were essential to the fair working of modern industry._

_Sir J. Simon concluded his remarks by criticising labour leaders for failing to have told the working classes of this country that a general strike was a vastly different thing from an ordinary strike. He also accused them of abusing the power which the community gave them. He warned, unless they were careful there might be a terrible reaction and immense invasion and reduction of the legitimate rights of organised labour._

When he finally left the office, the sun had retreated over the horizon and London lay in dim silence. He travelled back home on a bus run by scabs—he imagined them being trained in Chiswick, Nancy watching on with something close to disdain—and climbed the stairs to his flat as one might walk to the gallows to hang.

It was all quiet in his flat, all still. A brief reprieve had illuminated his loneliness to a bursting, blinding light.

He needed to shut his eyes.

Curling himself up on the couch, knees tucked almost to his chest, he thought of Tom. He thought of Nancy. He thought of how love might not have been meant for him and how he had convinced himself he was at peace with that.

He wasn’t.

Undeniably now, he could not bear it.

“Oh, God,” he whispered. “Oh, God.”

*

On Sunday there were riots. On Monday some communists were arrested on charges of seditious conspiracy. On Tuesday “For King and Country” was finally plastered over the top of the _Daily Mail_ , beneath it a scathing report on the TUC and praise for the patriotic men and women that had treated the strike with great contempt.

The world was settling back into a strange normality.

That afternoon was bright and warm, as though Spring had at last seen sense to show its true colours. The windows were open and Will felt the pleasant breeze pass through the buzzing office as he mulled over some figures from the Ministry of Pensions latest committee meeting. It was about the expenditure on war pensions. It had been dropped on his desk without a word.

Spin it good, Will thought. Look what the government is doing. Look at how much they care. They are wholly good. Their constitutional right to govern should not be threatened by radical trade unionists.

Just never mind that the government sent them to the war that crippled them, leaving them unable to work. Never mind the lack of jobs created for those that could. Never mind that Tom would still have a brother if it were not for these bastards, Will thought, and he would still have a family.

Thumping his fist against his desk, Will apologised a moment later, his bewildered colleagues momentarily pausing to stare at him curiously.

“Just can’t seem to find the right words,” he muttered, ducking his head and reshuffling his notes.

It was as he was trying to sink back into his very own skin that a flurry of movement erupted at the door. One of the more junior editors that Will knew only as John came rushing through the room and climbed up onto a desk not far from his. In his hand he clutched a note from Marlowe.

“The strike’s over!” he announced. “It’s done!”

Will sunk even lower in his seat, eyes falling dead on nothing by his side.

“Pugh called Baldwin at noon, said the strike was to be terminated forthwith,” John shouted louder over the rumble of chatter that had broken out in the newsroom. “Thank God, he said! Thank God it is all over! Thank God for that!”

A civilised celebration broke out as some people hugged and cheered. Marlowe, or so the rumour went, would be in soon to thank them all for their continued commitment to order, government, country and crown. The idea stirred a queerness in the pit of Will’s stomach as he hid his face in his hands, elbows rested on his desk. He had been thanked for as much once before, though he no longer had the medals to prove it.

When he lifted his head, John was stepping down from the desk.

“What did the miners get?” he asked.

John looked at him and shook his head. _Nothing_.

It had all been for nothing.

*

Later that day, Will took a taxi to the West India Docks.

It seemed, like everything else, it had fallen back into clockwork condition as quickly as it had stopped. Will watched it tick around him, men passing him by in small groups heading back towards the loading bays they had abandoned nine days prior as cargo ships disappeared along the Thames. All was well, some might say, but there was a bitterness in the warm air, heavy and thick like treacle.

It was the kind of resentment born from being shot in the front by your enemy, and while being stabbed in the back by your friend.

Will walked around the docks, lost. He was looking for Tom. He wasn’t sure how, and he didn’t entirely know why, but he was. It was the only thing he was certain of in that moment, the only thing that made sense.

As he broke out into a jog, suddenly more determined, he found some areas were cordoned off to the public, other streets led to dead ends. He ran down one and swore as his fingers clutched at a railing, staring out at the dark, murky water that sat calm in the import dock, its near side lined with warehouses. He leaned low, pressed his forehead to the iron bars and caught his breath. What a thankless task, a voice in his head screamed, but one he would do anyway.

He pushed himself from the railing and went.

“Do you know Tom—Tom Blake?” he called as he made his way through the quay, trying his best not to run into anyone. “Has anyone seen him?” he would ask to those that did. “Do you know where I would be able to find him?”

By the junction dock, is what they told him. That was where Tom usually worked. He had to go back on himself, they explained with a broad, sweeping arm, back towards East Ferry Road. He was already running again as he thanked them for their help, breaking out into a sprint over a vacated little bridge that rattled with his every step. He had certainly taken more perilous journeys, he thought, slipping on a metal sheet.

Nothing of the sort scared him much anymore.

But facing Tom did, he realised as he slowed. Tom was standing with a group of men by a large shed, all of them with their faces downturned, smoking. Faintly, over the sound of his own heavy breathing, he heard them talking about the strike.

About what a waste it had been.

“Tom,” he said, not loud enough to demand attention, but familiar enough to attract Tom’s.

He turned where he stood and immediately began walking towards him, a quirk in his brow and a question tensed in his lips. “What are you doing here?” was what it ended up being, no accusation weighing his voice down, only surprise. “Did you _run_ here?”

“Not the whole way,” he panted.

Instinctively, he put a hand on Tom’s shoulder to steady himself.

Tom cupped a hand to Will’s elbow in return.

“I wanted—I wanted to say sorry, for everything, for not telling you that I—” He stopped, taking a moment to breathe. Tom’s hand tightened on his elbow as he swayed. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I don’t know what I want or whose side I’m on or what to do about any of it. I—”

“Will!” Tom interrupted. “You don’t need to say sorry to me.”

“But I—”

“What? Did your job?” Tom shook him from where he held him. “I’m not some stupid, idealistic idiot, Will. And I didn’t think you had all them Daily Mail newspapers in your flat cause you liked reading them. I can put two and two together, you know.”

Will freed himself from Tom’s grip.

“You _knew_? You knew and you didn’t—”

Tom took a quick glance over his shoulder before he began leading Will down the street with a hand now gripped into his jacket. Will followed dumbly, legs heavy. He could really do with a sit down and a sleep. For the time being, though, he would have to content himself with Tom’s hand to his chest, holding him flat against a grimy warehouse wall. He let his head fall lazily against it, the pain at odds with the static of adrenaline pulsing through his brain.

“You are so fucking stupid,” Tom said, surging forward and up onto his toes to kiss him before he could think.

Will’s body froze for a moment, locking itself into place as his hands fisted at his own waist. A strange panic exploded in his head; not that they would get caught, but that this would never happen again. It was his automatic thought every time, artillery and sniper fire a screaming rush of a memory in his ears. There was a second wave of it when he felt Tom begin to pull away, so he made a small, starved sound and leaned into the kiss, opening his mouth against Tom’s.

After a moment, Tom pulled away to breathe sharp and damp against Will’s skin.

Will smeared his lips over the side of Tom’s face.

They panted together.

“I do think the Daily Mail’s a load of shit, by the way,” Tom said suddenly, curling his fingers into the lapels of Will’s jacket and giving him a hardy shove against the wall. “Ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”

With that, Will could agree.

*

“I still can’t believe the TUC sold out the miners,” Tom muttered, holding a broadsheet up by his face.

Will could. It had been the only thing he had been validated in correctly thinking the entire time, the only thing he had ever truly meant.

“You can’t rely on trade union bureaucracies,” he said, pouring tea from the pot. “Or your own party, for that matter. The only ones you can really trust are yourselves, your own strength and politically informed organisation among the rank and file. It’s their creativity and combativeness you build a—for lack of a better word—revolution on the back of. They’re the only ones that’ll fight—and fight to the finish.”

Tom stared at him from over his newspaper, bemused.

“What?” Will asked.

He set both their cups on Queen Victoria’s face.

“Nothing,” Tom said back, hiding his smile again as he set the paper down. Then he said, softer, under his breath, “Comrade Schofield.”

Pretending he did not hear that, Will took their tea to the living-room, Tom following close behind. It was Saturday, Tom had finished early and he was off the following day. They often spent weekends together, becoming reacquainted with each other, though it had been easier to fall into old routines than Will cared to admit.

When they sat with their tea, Tom rested his feet up on Will’s thighs as he reached for his book.

“I could get used to this,” Tom said, nestling his shoulder against the back of the couch and wiggling his socked toes in his lap. His cup stayed clutched to his chest. “Just being with you.”

Will smiled over at him, thinking the very same.

**Author's Note:**

> the general strike of 1926 was an unmitigated disaster, ultimately securing no concessions for the miners. the miners would continue striking until october/november though many that did were blacklisted by employers and many, along with their families, fell into abject poverty surviving only on lockout payments and charity. 
> 
> the following year the british government passed the trade disputes and trade union act that made all sympathetic strikes and mass picketing illegal. trade union membership fell massively as a result. this act was repealed by the labour government of 1946 but re-introduced later by thatcher’s government and remains today. 
> 
> one of the few positives was that it highlighted the government’s misuse and control of the media to spread false news and further their own narrative. the government-produced “british gazette”, which was funded by the taxpayer, came under particular scrutiny. winston churchill was apparently given the role of editor “to keep him busy” after making remarks about wanting to seize union funds and turn machine guns on striking miners, which prime minister baldwin feared might radicalise the left. 
> 
> two years after the strike, labour won the election, but due to the great depression, ramsay macdonald ended up the leader of a cross-party, pro-budget cuts national government comprised mainly of conservative mps. this, along with his failure to support the general strike, makes him a pretty forgotten figure on the british left. ya favourite socialist boi, james maxton, famously shouted at his fellow labour mp “sit down, man, you’re a bloody tragedy” 
> 
> none of this is relevant i just think it's really interesting and yes this is a 9000 word diss of the daily mail and one day i will write a cute au but for now... there is this. im hrrybnghm on tumblr if you wanna talk about labours abandonment of the working classes. (im kidding)(not really)


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